Tareka Lofton of Loft22 Cakes quickly got even more creative after the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Tareka Lofton is nothing if not adaptable. Once a starving artist in Texarkana and, later, a struggling pastry student in Dallas, the successful Fort Worth bakery owner today aims to be a role model for young women trying to find their way in the culinary world. Her message is one of never giving up, no matter the difficulty.

“There I was, making pâte à choux in class but eating a bologna sandwich at lunch. But it was just part of my journey,” Lofton says. “It was sad at the time, but I can laugh about it now.”

Just as her Loft22 Cakes, a 3-year-old bakery on Fort Worth’s Near Southside, was hitting its stride, the pandemic brought business to a near-halt. Making wedding cakes is a significant portion of her business, and most brides are hitting the brakes until the health crisis passes. Lofton, however, capitalized on one of the trending topics during this unprecedented quarantine time: She’s making cakes that look like rolls of bathroom tissue — and they’re selling like crazy.

“We’ve sold more than 100 in two weeks, and more each day,” Lofton says. “One customer bought a whole 12-pack — 12 cakes!”

Patrons are buying the 6-inch cakes, which are multicolored, funfetti inside and iced in white buttercream, with ridges to resemble the paper roll, for birthdays and just to support Lofton. At $50 each, she says the cake sales are keeping her in business, week to week.

But this is far from the first time the pastry chef has stared down adversity with courage and pluck.

As student in 2012 at Le Cordon Bleu in Dallas, Lofton was embarrassed one day when a bologna sandwich fell out of her backpack in front of fellow students. When they teased her about being a French culinary student who eats such peasant food, she laughed it off. “I just said, ‘I’m a country girl at heart.’ But the truth was, that’s the food I could afford at the dollar store.”

Growing up in Texarkana, Lofton immersed herself in art projects and wanted to be an art educator. She created sculptures for public art projects and painted murals, too. While a student at Southern Arkansas University, roughly an hour’s drive from her hometown, she worked on commissioned portraits but found herself broke most of the time.

“I always loved cooking, so the transition from studio artist to pastry chef wasn’t a big leap,” recalls Lofton, reminiscing about the baking passion she inherited from the grandmother called Mama Sarah. As long as she can remember, folks drove from as far as Memphis to buy her grandmother’s cakes and pies, which Mama Sarah sold from a drive-through window Lofton’s grandfather built on their home.

And though Lofton baked wedding cakes for parishioners at her pastor-father’s church in Texarkana, she was nearly 30 before she decided to pursue a path into pastry work. Grieving the loss of her father, she decided a change was needed, so she followed an older sister to Dallas. Working in a department store, she couldn’t shake her longing for a culinary career.

“I’d been watching the Food Network since it began, following women who cooked. And I became obsessed with Julia Child, who was an auntie in my head,” Lofton says. “Julia was a late bloomer, too, just like me. I believed I could reinvent myself, and that was powerful.”

Delighted to stumble on an advertisement for Le Cordon Bleu’s then-new patisserie program, she nailed the entrance interview and dove into school: “Learning to do everything the French way, understanding the precision required in classic cuisine, was such a thrill for me. My soul just came alive. I felt like the stars were lining up.”

But there were really hard times, financially. There were days when she couldn’t pay the electric bill because her last few dollars had gone to buy bologna. “But that just made me want to succeed more.”

Recalling those days, eight years ago, stirs up emotions. She pauses, wipes away tears and apologizes. “Sometimes I just can’t believe how this has really worked out for me.”

More than a little kismet figures into that. An internship required for graduation led her to Stir Crazy Baked Goods in Fort Worth, then an upstart in a tiny space just south of downtown. Owner-pastry chef Robbie Werner couldn’t afford to pay her new intern but was happy to provide a practical learning environment for the eager apprentice.

“Tareka was struggling through some personal losses and sought out baking as a new refuge. She put her entire effort into culinary school, with an emphasis on creating artful cakes, and it is so clear that she followed the right path,” Werner says.

Lofton spent five years after graduation working in various bakeries, honing her craft and moonlighting with a wedding cake business from her one-bedroom apartment. She turned out five-tier cakes from her tiny kitchen, stuffing her fridge with wedding cake ingredients and offering tastings to brides at Starbucks. Growing Loft22 Cakes on social media, she knew that opening her own bakery was a must.

After delivering a cake to a Near Southside venue one day, she drove by Stir Crazy, wistfully thinking how she’d love to open her own place there. Two days later, she saw Werner post on social media that Stir Crazy was moving to a bigger space nearby on Magnolia Avenue.

“I had goosebumps and texted Robbie right away. She’d taught me so much and I loved that spot. We met and I assured her I didn’t want to make cakes like hers, that I’d do my own kind of cakes,” Lofton says.

“Moving out of my original space and handing her the keys took courage for us both,” Werner says. “I love sharing the neighborhood together. We are always recommending clients back and forth, considering that our styles fit different clients in different ways.”

A girl looks up at a mural by Kristen Soble of Tareka Lofton outside of her bakery, Loft 22 Cakes, in Fort Worth. One of Tareka's goals is to mentor young women of color, show them that they can achieve their dreams with enough hard work and commitment.(Tareka Lofton)

Marking three years at the little red brick storefront recently, Lofton says more than a hundred friends and customers came to celebrate. One friend brought her little girl, who stared at the mural of Lofton— painted by local artist Kristen Soble on the building’s exterior — and said, “Wow!”

“I love when little girls come in with their mothers or grandmothers and see an African-American woman running the business," Lofton says. “They’ll say, 'Is this your place? Did you make all these things?’”

She notes that with a business focused primarily on wedding and specialty cakes, she could easily run a closed studio. Instead, she prefers operating an open shop, where customers can come in also just to buy a piece of cake or banana pudding or lemon cookies.

“I need a connection with the community," she says. "I want kids to see a black, female-owned business so they can know what is possible.”

Lofton gets excited at the idea of mentoring those who share her passion for pastry. Eventually, she’d like to teach. Till then, you’ll find her painting a design on buttercream frosting or sketching wedding cake designs for brides. As her mentor Werner says, “It’s exciting to watch her grow.”